This is Her Name
by purple-pentapus
Summary: "You should've waited another year to volunteer," Cato says. His voice sounds strange, like he's impossibly tired even though he's just slept. Clove/Cato, kind of.


_you lie asleep_

_in our bed_

_all twisted in your clothes_

_Johnny Belinda, Active Child_

They're hungry for blood from the moment they're born.

Their mothers reek sweetly of it, their fathers wear it in smears across their skin like trophies. Their preachers speak of unholy battle and their faith is _kill or be killed._ The feeble-minded don't live until twelve and failing to volunteer for the Games is a sin.

Cato stomps on a boy he's known since he was too young to remember, and Clove kicks her sister once she's down. They reach the podium, and their hands, slick with death, are held high in the name of _District Two,_ but both of them can already taste victory.

He smiles at her because they're on Capitol television, and she smiles back because she's going to kill him, gloriously, and taste his life on her lips.

She almost expected the train cabins to vibrate, maybe. But they sit down to dinner on the first evening without so much as a rattling place setting, and Clove's wine is still, and white.

Their female mentor downs her glass in a single gulp, and says to Clove, "You're pretty young, for a tribute."

Clove stares back at her, unwavering. "I'm ready," she says. If there's supposed to be a trace of solemnity on her freckled face, there isn't. Lyme gives her a skeptical look, like maybe she should've waited until she was days away from being nineteen, like Cato.

Later, she creeps into the woman's room and leaves the same reply tacked to the wall with one of her favorite blades. The letters are disjointed, like sloppy slashes because she learned to throw knives before anyone taught her to write.

It was Cato who did, in the end, but not until she was ten and it was evident that she was even more unstable than he.

The sky outside is pale grey, limping towards morning when she slips inside his room. She's quiet, the only one who's ever been able to sneak up on him.

His breathing is only audible because she's taught herself what to listen for. He's twisted sideways in the bed sheets, half on his side and half on his back, one arm curled under his stomach and one out loosely in front of his face. Cato sleeps like she does, with a knife in each hand.

She sits just out of arm's reach and lets him wake violently. He holds the serrated edge of a blade to her throat until she pushes it away.

"Are we there?" he asks softly.

She shakes her head in the half-light, and imagines they're already in the Arena. "Soon."

He sinks back until his head is settled in the same spot on his pillow. She watches him for a long minute, and he stares out the window at the mountainous terrain fluttering by outside.

"I'm going to win," she says at last. She doesn't look away as he shifts his gaze to her.

He flexes his hand against the pommel of the knife, and for a moment the tendons stand out whitely. "Maybe," he says. "Or maybe I'll win." She watches in her peripheral vision as his grip on his weapon fails to loosen.

"You should've waited another year to volunteer," Cato says. His voice sounds strange, like he's impossibly tired even though he's just slept.

Clove stands silently and makes her exit, his eyes on her back like it's a target.

She sleeps for an hour, and dreams that his arms are wrapped around her and her legs are threaded through his. His skin is cool, and his neck is bent at an odd angle.

Their entrance to the tribute parade is the same as it has been for the past seventy-four years. They wave to the wealthy Capitol citizens in their extravagant outfits and Clove feels sick when Cato smiles.

Afterwards, she wonders for what's only the second time in her life if she might lose.

Brutus gives them instructions to fall in with the other Careers in training the next morning, so she does. She hangs in the back and lets Cato elbow the District One boy out of his spot in the front.

He watches the other tributes like he's hunting and she knows with comforting certainty that every last one of them will die.

They train very little, for they've been training their entire lives, and at night they sleep better than they did when they were children. The hardest part for Clove is keeping her hands from around Flickerman's neck while he laughs.

She earns her score of ten for cruelty and Cato gets his for brute force. The girl from District Twelve gets an eleven, but their mentors tell them she's nothing to worry about, that those tributes will die in the first minute like they always do.

Cato steps in her way when she leaves the dining room. He's nearly a head taller than she is, but she doesn't flinch when he steps up so her nose is brushing his chest.

"We work together," he says.

She looks up at him, slowly. "I know. I heard Brutus."

He edges her back a pace, so they're standing in the entrance to the darkened, cavernous dining room. "Until the end, we work together," he reiterates.

Clove smiles a little. "I don't think so, Cato."

He's at her like an animal, slams her against the wall of the corridor so hard her ribs clap against her lungs. His teeth are bared, and he's got one arm shoved between her legs so her feet can't touch the floor.

Her hand flits towards a knife on her hip, but Cato doesn't press further.

"I watch your back," he snarls, "like I've been doing forever. You watch mine. And in the end, one of us wins."

His breath on her face tastes of the rancid sweet Capitol vodka. "Okay," she says.

He presses his body against her, so she can hardly breathe. His thumb is at her throat, his forearm crushed to her chest. "Swear it."

She smiles again, her teeth shining white in the dim. "I swear it," she purrs.

His gaze is murderous. "You know what I mean," his voice is a growl.

Clove is still for a long moment. She holds her head so that her neck hurts, her skull a hair's breadth away from hitting the wall. Cato's hold on her doesn't loosen, so she moves a hand to her knife, pulls it from the scabbard enough to nick the pad of her finger on the blade.

Cato lets her slide to the floor and snatches her wrist. She bends her finger as he drags it across his lips, pulling the smear of blood down onto his chin. He licks it off.

He starts to leave, but she grabs the front of his shirt and bites his mouth, then runs her tongue over the broken lip. He looks at her with blood in the corner of his frown.

"Two-way street," she says.

The massacre at the Cornucopia is glorious. Clove walks away with blood between her toes, caked under her nails, stuck to her eyelashes. Cato's sword is bathed in crimson that matches the splatter across his face, and she laughs jubilantly.

She kills leisurely, takes her time slitting her victims' throats. The cannon booms and she's never felt so _alive._

They're rid of Glimmer and Marvel by the fifth night. Cato takes care of the boy from Twelve and they light a fire without fear of being ambushed.

She lets herself at ease when they're alone. The fire warms her hands, and she turns her palms to it.

"Peeta's still alive," she says. Cato looks up at her across the hearth. "There was no cannon."

Cato rubs his hands together and sits back on his bed of pine needles. "There will be," he says.

They sleep with their backs pressed together, knives in each hand. His skin is warm, his breathing even, and when she wakes she thinks about breaking his neck.

A Gamemaker comes over the loudspeaker with an announcement, and Cato looks blearily at her. For a silent minute it's like he can't find any words, and her next heartbeat hurts. "That means we don't have to kill each-other," he says.

She nods slowly. "Okay." Her hand comes away from her hip, middle finger catching momentarily on the hilt. The cut on the underside peels open, starts to throb.

He lets out a long sigh, like he's been on the brink of exhaustion for years. Something unravels in her chest, and her eyes slip closed for a moment before she forces them back open.

Clove screams his name while she dies, and doesn't have enough time to figure out why.

A?N: I don't own the Hunger Games. Ended a bit abruptly, sorry, but review if you liked it :)


End file.
